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Nov 25

Christmas, Hannukah, New Year’s: the winter holidays are full of festive spirit, and your email campaign can reflect the joy and festivity of the holiday season.

Holiday templates are a great place to start. Change the color scheme of your emails to green and red, blue and silver, or any other holiday colors is an easy way to create an effective transformation for your emails. In addition, you can download holiday templates. ConstantContact.com has many holiday templates to choose from for all of the major winter holidays.

Also, don’t forget about highlight your products and services for gifts! An email message is an effective and speedy way to let your customers know about sales, special prices, and coupons to use for your business. Email is an important way to communicate with your customers, so do not let this opportunity for valuable holiday conversions pass you by.

Sep 2

With the kids heading back to school and Labor Day just around the corner, summer is officially coming to a close, and that means that cooler temperatures, fall colors, hay rides, and apple cider are closer than you realize. Start planning your fall email campaigns, and you will be ready for the new season.

One way to get your email campaign ready for fall is by changing the template. Find holiday and fall email templates online at Email Template Pro or other template sights, and download them and add them to your emails. You can also include fall images to further transform your emails.

In addition, you can change the products you advertise in your emails to seasonally appropriate items that your business offers, whether it is seasonal clothing or back to school items, or holiday decorations.

Transforming your emails to match with the changing seasons can be an effective way to boost conversions and provide your customers with what they need for the upcoming season.

Jun 3
Video in Email?
icon1 admin | icon2 Email Design | icon4 06 3rd, 2011| icon3No Comments »

Images in Email are now a foundation of email campaigns, but what about videos? Is it practical, effective, or even possible to include videos in your emails?

The minds at CampaignMonitor.com have been researching growth in this field. They tested incorporating video in emails by using various methods and platforms, including Flash, Quicktime, Windows Media Player, GIF, and MPEGs. They compiled a handy chart with the information here.

In addition to the results, they also have some tips and recommendations, as well as drawbacks in embedding video that will help you in the process. If you are considering embedding video in your emails, this article is a great resource to check out. Videos are a great way to connect to your audience, whether you embed videos in the email or just provide a link to the video.

Apr 28

Although images are great for adding interest to your emails, how your customer may receive and view the email should be considered. Many email carriers, including those like Gmail and Aol Mail, automatically block images unless if the user accepts images from the sender, which makes all the hard work you spent perfecting images and graphics on your template sometimes go by unseen.

Because images do not always appear on emails, you want to make sure that your email still has meaning without images. Images can be great additions to your email, but you do not want to put the bulk of your message or text in the images. Without images, you still want your email to tell your customers what is most important, i.e. the special promotions, deals, or products you are offering.

Of course, a great way to let your images be visible to your readers is to remind them to add you to their address or contact list so that your images will always be visible. A sure-fire way to test to see if the email is clear without images is to send a test email to preview how it looks. Although images can add a lot of visual interest to an email, make sure that your overall message will still shine through.

Mar 22

What better way to make your emails interesting and seasonally appropriate than by incorporating seasonal templates? Several template providers, from Email Template Pro to StreamSend, have seasonal options that will add extra interest and fun to your emails.

What better way to advertise special flower arrangements or boxes of chocolates than with a Valentine’s Day template? The holiday theme will help highlight your special deals during the season, as well as add extra fun to the email.

When the summer months roll around, add summer colors, like bright hues of blue, yellow, and orange, and images of beaches, ice cream, watermelon, and July 4th to communicate the fun and relaxed nature of summer. Putting your customers in a great mood may help entice them to buy whatever services or products you are trying to sell.

Another obvious time to incorporate colorful and fun templates is during holidays. July 4th, Memorial Day, Mother’s Day, Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas are just a few holidays that you could do a lot with by making a few easy adjustments to your existing template or downloading new templates. ConstantContact.com has a variety of downloadable holiday templates, with options available from Mardi Gras to Kwanzaa.

Many options are out there, so making your emails fun and holiday-friendly is easier than ever!

Mar 13

Flashy graphics, intricate designs, and an email full of content may seem like a good idea, but simplicity can sometimes be the most important tool for an effective email campaign.

Graphics and images are important ways to add interest to your emails, but you do not want to go overboard. In today’s world of sensory overload, your reader may be looking through your email while watching TV, working, waiting in traffic, or doing a million other little things, so you want to make sure that the message of your email is clear. Choose simple images and graphics that add to the text as opposed to take away from it.

Another aspect of simplicity is color choice. Three colors are enough for an interesting palate, especially if you are using graphics or images. More than three colors combined with graphics may create sensory overload for your reader, distracting them from the overall purpose of the message.

Luckily, many templates are already created to appeal to simplicity. Email Template Pro and StreamSend offers multiple templates that let the message of the email triumph over busy graphics or color palate.

Mar 6

Whether you have an in-house graphic designer or rely on web-based products, graphics are an effective way to make emails visually interesting, making them worth the extra cost. Although text is important, a graphic can catch the readers’ attention and make them want to read on.

The pro of having an in-house graphic designer is that you can have graphics exactly as you want them. The cost may be prohibitive for smaller businesses, but many graphic designers also do free-lance work. With graphic designers, you can customize the end result, and you know you are ending up with a unique graphic that is not available elsewhere.

However, if having in-house designers is not an option, many template providers and websites offer graphics packages that contain images for any and every purpose. While you may not be able to customize your image, you will have many to choose from, all for one price. Email Template Pro and StreamSend are great online resources for engaging templates that feature graphics.

Whichever option suits your business the best, graphics are a sure way to bring your emails to the next level.

Jan 6

Whether you design an Email template yourself or use a template from Email Template Pro or a company like StreamSend, it never hurts to have some inspiration for your email design and campaigns. Letting something inspiring drive your email look and message can help set your email apart from the many others filling up your customers’ inboxes.

Luckily, inspiration is free! A great place to start is to consider the season. If springtime flowers are blooming, why not choose a design that celebrates the warmth and bright colors of the season? Meanwhile, as those first flakes of snow start to drift down in the winter, a winter-themed email campaign is timely and engaging.

Other sources of inspiration could be a song, picture, or event. Holidays are also common inspirations that help connect to your customer, in addition to providing an effective platform to advertise products or services. Inspiration could be found anywhere, and if you are filling stuck in an email marketing rut, look around you! You never know what could be right outside your window or on your desk that can provide the inspiration for a great email marketing campaign.

Dec 1

As you send out emails to your list of recipients, its important to effectively construct your email in a way that’s pleasing to the eye. We have several free email templates on our own site that can help you out with this process depending on if you’re selling goods, services or simply need a colorful background to go with your email. If you feel like your skills have improved enough to start creating your own newsletter, it’s important to start slow and not move into the design process too fast. Don’t start from scratch your first time – use a basic HTML template to put you on the right track and customize the template to fit your needs. For some designers, customizable templates are all they desire.

Remember, if the company you work for provides incentives for new users to sign up  for newsletters, it’s important to incorporate this incentive in your ad design to attract new users. For example, if a soda company provides a “buy one get one free” beverage for signing up for a newsletter, make sure you include this message using attention-getting technique, like bright colors or interesting font, and display the message beside or under the main title of your advertisement.

Be bold in your newsletter – use color where it counts, and link your messages directly to the pages of the Web site. Be sure to preview your newsletter before you send it out, and use researching tools and data-gathering tools from sites like StreamSend to get the best results. StreamSend has several customizable templates to browse through and perhaps get a few ideas in coordination with design.

Nov 8

Although you may not be a computer design wizard, there are many easy to use tools out there to make your emails attractive and appealing.

Perhaps the easiest tool of all is a free email template. Email Template Pro offers free template packages, or you may choose to invest in a template package from a provider like StreamSend, which offers dozens of great packages. When using these templates, customize the email to maximize potential. Here are some easy ways to customize the template:

  • Use color: Coordinate the colors in the email to correspond to your company’s logo, website, store, or products.
  • Add pictures: Use pictures from recent events, of products, of employees, or of your store to add interest to your email.
  • Feature the Logo: Many templates have prime placement spots for a logo. Take advantage of this design feature!

On Email Template Pro, easily customizable options include the Professional Newsletter and Monthly Company Newsletter.

For your next email campaign, look beyond using just plain, boring text. Help your message stand out and be memorable by customizing an engaging email template, and you will be sure to see the results of this investment.

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